


Souls & Switches: Alien Swarm

by Kariachi



Series: Souls & Switches [5]
Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Nonbinary Character, So Much Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 21:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12396957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kariachi/pseuds/Kariachi
Summary: It’s been weeks, nearly a month, since their father and Miela disappeared and they’re just- they’re out of options.Ben's their only hope.





	Souls & Switches: Alien Swarm

“I don’t like this Elena…”

“We don’t have a choice.” Rolling her shoulders, she reaches to brush a knuckle carefully over Celio’s thorax. It’s been weeks, nearly a month, since their father and Miela disappeared and they’re just- they’re out of options. “This’ll work.” Her daemon huddles closer to her ear, his tiny claws scratching at it worriedly as she slips off the motorcycle they _may_ have stolen. Maybe.

Again, out of choices.

“I hope so,” he says, gently biting at her scalp while she pulls the canister of chips out of the saddlebag and turns to stare at the empty building where this meeting is taking place. “I really do.”

~

It’s more brightly lit than they expect, and on the small side. More an old garage than anything. But the guy they’ve arranged to speak with is there waiting, a blue jay on his shoulder.

“You’re late,” she announces when they walk in, she and her other half- Kevin, his name is Kevin- both looking them other with a critical eye.

“Traffic,” is their explanation. It’s a lie, they just had to build up a bit of strength before coming in, and the way the other teen’s eyebrow raises says he knows it, but they aren’t called out. She squares her shoulders, stands up straight, and hopes they can’t see the fidgeting beetle in amongst her hair. “Got some things I’m looking to sell.” The blue jay looks her over again, then chuckles.

“Somebody’s posturing,” she says and Elena tenses. Kevin smirks. “First time working with the big boys?” Eyes narrowing, Elena’s about to make a rude comment back when her contact shoves off the bright green car he’d been leaning against since before they got there, shaking his head.

“Ignore Annelie, newbies amuse her.” He holds out a hand for the canister. “What have you got for us, Elena was it?”

“The jig is up,” Celio says, quiet enough that she knows the others can’t hear him. She just sighs and nods. They already know she isn’t a big name, or an expert, but it’s not like they’re looking to make a profit anyway. As long as these two don’t get violent, and get them the meeting they’re looking for? She doesn’t care how bad they fuck them over.

“I don’t know,” she admits, handing over the canister. “It’s alien tech, I know that much. Some people said you knew a guy who’d buy it off me. Short, ratty thing?” Now it’s Kevin’s turn to narrow his eyes, but his look is dangerous instead of challenging. Annelie watches her and Celio as he turns the canister over in his hand, eying the chips critically.

“Argit’s got pretty high standards,” he says and their stomachs fall.

“You said you don’t know what they are?” Annelie asks them, her tone offhanded and at odds with the intensity with which she’s watching. This time Celio is the one to respond, raising his small voice to be sure he’s heard.

“We were hoping you guys could tell us, as well as set up a deal.” The bird daemon looks them over again before turning her own attention to the chips.

“They don’t look familiar to me Kev.”

“No,” he shakes his head as he speaks. “Definitely at least level nine or ten tech but…”

“You think Susi and Argit will know?”

“Maybe? They do have more experience.” Celio pitters around Elena’s ear.

“They’re gonna say no,” he whispers to her in his tiny, tinny voice, “they’re gonna say no and we’ll be right back where we started and we’ll never get them back-”

“Hush!” Elena hisses, fists clenching at her sides. “They won’t say no.” They can’t say no. This is the closest they’ve gotten to getting help and just, they can’t say no. She won’t let them.

“What the fuck?!” The words and a clatter bring her attention back to the present. Kevin’s backed up, Annelie fluffed large on his shoulder, and when Elena follows his glare she sees the canister lying on the floor a few feet away. The chips are glowing. Her heart stops. They’ve never

“I haven’t seen them do that before,” she says, just moments before she has to duck to shield herself from an explosion of glass and whirring chips. On instinct she dives for the protection of the car, Celio still clinging to her ear like a lifeline. When she looks back, Kevin is coated in the same green-painted metal as his ride and Annelie

Annelie is tearing through a massive cloud of chips as a tiger. Elena isn’t sure if she’s more concerned about the tiger thing or the fact that there were not that many chips in that canister. Another cloud dives for her out of nowhere, only to be knocked apart by Kevin.

“I repeat, the fuck?!” he says as he and his daemon struggle to keep the chips at bay. It takes Elena a moment to realize he’s addressing them, and by that point Celio is already talking.

“We don’t know, Dad never said-” It’s a dramatic entrance worthy of a movie, Elena and Celio both noticing at once the man standing at the other end of the building, silhouetted by the sunlight streaming in. Celio falls silent. They haven’t seen him in weeks and yet there he is, ordering chips forward, attacking them. No! No, something’s not right, he would never-

Kevin and Annelie notice him a moment later and immediately Annelie surges forward. She has to be straining her bond to get close to him and Elena’s heart clenches as he backs away enough for her to hit the end of it. Whether it’s from concern for him or not, she can’t tell. All she knows is that Annelie is straining to swipe at him while not killing herself and Kevin from distance, that one instant she’s roaring and the next she flying into the car in a cloud of chips. In a heartbeat Elena in on her feet, trying her best to check she’s okay without touching her, murmuring reassurances to both daemons even as the tiger’s eyes crack open.

“Kevin,” she stumbles upright as quickly as she can and Elena and Celio follow her gaze to Kevin. He’s the one pulling at the bond now, his hand against the wall, eyes glowing, electricity arcing over him. His lips are pulled back in a snarl and when the first chip reaches him Elena instinctively shields her eyes.

When the light dies down enough for her to blink the spots from her eyes and look around the chips lay smoking on the concrete, her father is gone, and Annelie has run to Kevin’s side. If Elena is honest with herself, she’s too scared to do the same. He’s still snarling, his fists are clenched, and he just turned the entire building into a light show.

“Kevin…” Annelie’s voice is concerned, and wary, and Kevin breathes deep before he responds.

“I’m fine,” he says with finality, “I’m, I just need a minute…” His daemon licks his hand comfortingly.

Her eyes are steel when she turns to them.

“Talk,” she says, stalking over as if they hadn’t been trying to help her before. Elena feels a familiar fire spark up, she’s not going to be intimidated, not when she has a mission.

“We don’t know-”

“Don’t,” the tiger jumps on the hood of the car- “Watch the paint, Annelie”- all the better to loom, “lie to me.”

“We just want help!”

“Celio!” Elena snarls, but her daemon’s outburst seems to have helped some. At least, now Annelie’s gaze is curious and threatening as opposed to just threatening. She watches as Kevin finally makes his way over, fists still clenched, and jaw too now that she can see better, but no longer snarling.

“What help?” he asks, crossing his arms, and Celio takes that as his cue to open the floodgates.

“Our father was kidnapped,” he said as loud and as fast as he could manage, which was pretty fast but not so loud, “and we were hoping Ben 10 could help us be we don’t know how to get a hold of him! Then we heard about that Argit guy and how he’s close to him but we don’t know how to get in touch with him either! But you do! So we thought you could get us to him and he’d get us to Ben and Ben would help!” Celio’s breathing is loud in her ear and Elena claps a protective hand over him. Her expression is firm, challenging. If they won’t help then she’ll find someone else who will. Ben is their last chance of getting their father back, of figuring out why he’s- They won’t be stopped here.

“Where did you get the chips?” Annelie asks, her tone calmer now, though still wary. This time Elena is the one to answer.

“Dad’s lab. He’s been working with them for years. We think they’re related to his disappearance.”

“Then call the Plumbers,” Kevin says and Elena’s own jaw clenches.

“They won’t help.” Anger builds in her as she says it, as she thinks about the hypocrites and assholes that threw her family aside and- Celio nips soothingly at her ear. “He’s an ex-Plumber, we’ve been blacklisted. They won’t even take messages from me.” Kevin scowls at that, but something tells her it’s not at them.

“It’s why we need to find Ben, he’s our last shot.” Elena pulls her hand away and Kevin and Annelie both stare at Celio. The tense moment that follows rolls into another, and another, before Kevin huffs a sigh.

“Get in the car,” he orders as he circles them to get to the driver’s side. Annelie shifts back into a bird, this one gray and black, to settle back on his shoulder. Elena is cautious as she does what he says.

“This is a Tennyson problem, he’ll find it anyway,” he says as she’s settling in, pulling out his phone. “Might as well drop it off.”

~

“You okay?”

Elena starts when Annelie addresses her, giving her a long look before turning her attention back to the buildings going by. She’s tense. Finding Ben was the goal, finding him and getting his help, but now that they’re on their way she… All she can think about is how easily he dropped her. About her father losing his job and about how she never heard from the boy who had been her best friend afterwards. Her dad was fired and suddenly…

“Our relationship with Ben and Cassie is,” she finally says, “complicated.” Kevin nods.

“Know the feeling.”

~

They expect the surprise on Ben and Cassie’s faces when they see them, but not the grins that come after it.

“Elena?!”

“Celio!!” Ben immediately beelines for her, and before she knows it Cassie is bouncing around her heels and she and Celio have no idea what to do.

“Ben.” Her voice is curt when she speaks, but she doesn’t know if she wants to scream or cry or both and it’s just what manages to come out. Ben at least doesn’t seem put off, but Gwen and Llyr give her a funny look from behind them.

“It’s been a long time,” the swan daemon says. Three years, to be exact. A turning point, when everything got harder.

“We’ve missed you,” Ben continues on, “ever since your dad quit and you guys moved-” and Elena sees red.

“Quit? Is that what they told you?” She doesn’t even bother to hide the snarl, fists clenching at her side. “My dad got fired, Ben. And we didn’t move until we lost the house four months later.” Celio edges forward to run his antennae over the corner of her eye, a vain attempt to calm her down. “Four months during which I somehow didn’t hear a thing from you!” She can see Ben’s face fall, hear Cassie whimper and Annelie sing a vaguely soothing melody, but Gwen is the one whose hand appears on her arm.

“Elena, we didn’t know,” she says and that seems to spur Ben into action. His hand is suddenly on her shoulder and he just looks so hurt and guilty.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, “Grandpa Max said you guys had left. If I’d had any idea… “

“We’re so, _so_ sorry, Celio.” Cassie looks like she’s going to cry, if dogs even can, and Elena stays frozen as her daemon slowly climbs down her jacket to wave his antennae at their old friends.

“I hope so.” He’s blatantly trying to be hard and cold, but it’s also very much not working. It’s, a little much really, and Elena finds herself taking a step backwards. Space is, space is good.

“Um, I’m glad you guys are all friends, but-” for the first time since they got there Elena’s attention is drawn to the non-Tennysons, and boy does it say something about her state of mind that she missed a daemon that big- “there was a reason we got called here, right?”

“Yeah,” Kevin responds for her. He’s clearly uncomfortable when she looks, Annelie nuzzling his jaw. “Elena, that’s Alan and Monarch-” he points to the boy who was speaking and his antelope- “and Argit and Susi.” That one she kind of recognizes from the descriptions she’d managed to scrape together. They just hadn’t realized the daemon beside the waving alien was so _large_.

“Turns out,” Annelie continues, “the Validuses have gotten themselves into some trouble.” For a moment Elena is going to argue, just because something bad happened to her dad doesn’t mean he got himself into it, but before she can Ben’s hands are on her shoulders again and he’s looking at her with one of the most serious expressions she’s ever seen on him.

“Tell us everything.”

~

“Well, that’s fucked up.” Not quite the response Elena and Celio were hoping for, but not one they could exactly disagree with. After all, Susi is right.

“And you’re sure the chips from the garage are dead?” Gwen looks uncertain, but Kevin nods at her, pulling a handful out of his pocket.

“Okay,” Celio whispers into Elena’s ear, “when did he-?”

“Probably while we were staring down a tiger.” Meanwhile Kevin and Gwen are both staring each other down.

“How do you know though?”

“Generally, when electronics start smoking? They’re dead.” Suddenly, Argit and Susi are eyeing him, and Elena is starting to wonder just how bad an idea what he did was.

“Kevin…”

“I’m fine. Promise.”

“Elena,” Ben pulls the attention of the small crowd to him, “do you know who that man was?” And there goes her stomach again. That man- It couldn’t have been him. The lighting was bad, she was seeing what she wanted to see, it was a shapeshifter, somebody was wearing his skin, it was not-

“No,” Celio says. “We’ve never seen him before.”

~

She isn’t sure how she’d expected Ben to help her, but it certainly hadn’t involved heading into the Plumber base. Getting in hadn’t been a problem, they’d even used the front door, Alan sticking close to her and Ben smoothing their way passed the man running the front, and inside had been…

Just like she remembered.

They’re not all loaded into the main room for five minutes before everyone is at a computer, all running different tests to figure out what these chips are. The only ones not working on their own are Alan and Monarch, who’ve crowded around a screen with Argit and Susi, obviously learning how to run these tests themselves.

“So, they’re techno-organic,” Alan eventually says when they’re pooling their findings. “Like mechamorphs.”

“Not like mechamorphs,” Kevin replies, he and Ben both shaking their heads. “Not quite as advanced.”

“But still, we can work with this, right?”

“Well we can figure out some weaknesses now.”

“Besides electricity.” Elena frowns as they speak, as Kevin blows a raspberry at Ben and Monarch and Llyr sighs.

“But, that doesn’t help us find my dad,” she says, and Celio waves his antennae in agreement.

“No,” Argit responds, “but it does help keep us alive while we do.”

“I can’t get an energy signature to trace,” Gwen says, “so we can’t track anything through them. _Thank you, Kevin..._ ”

“You’re welco-”

“What is going on here?”

Max is not supposed to be there. He is supposed to be out, doing whatever it is old people do in their spare time. He is definitely not supposed to be glaring at Elena and Celio. And if he had to be there and glaring, he at least could’ve brought food for _everyone_.

“What is _she_ doing here?” The Tennysons and Alan all give each other harried looks, but Argit just shoots Max a grin.

“Oh, you know, hanging out.” Kevin immediately follows suit.

“We figured, where better to spend our time? Got a pizza coming in twenty, it’s great.” Max threw a glare between them before turning his gaze to his grandchildren. Meanwhile Alan and Monarch were edging between Deana and Elena, Susi slipping into the space ahead of them.

“Ben.”

“She needs our help, Grandpa.”

“Get her out of here, Ben.” Elena is cheered to see the look on Ben’s face say everything _but_ ‘yes sir’, and even more so to see the other boys and their daemons looking at Max like he’s ripped the world’s worst fart.

“We’re not turning away someone in need,” Cassie says, her wiry fur on end as she stares down Deana.

“She’s a Validus, she’s not to be trusted.” Which is when Gwen finally steps in.

“Just because her dad got fired-”

“For stealing from the vaults!”

“Something you lied about!” Ben surges to his feet, a touch of righteous fury in his eyes. “And it’s not fair to throw her out for things her father-”

“Hush!” Deana’s lips are pulled back from her teeth and her growling speaks of an end to arguing. “The Validus family has been blacklisted, regulations state there is to be no interaction between them and any Plumber agents, now get. Her. Out.”

Elena is tense and ready to fight. Celio’s already used his miniscule weight to shove her sunglasses down over her eyes, perched on the bridge of her nose and ready to spray boiling fluids on anyone who would dare. They have not come this far just to get metaphorically cockblocked by some old man and his dog daemon. If they want them gone, they’ll have to move themselves.

“Make us.” But it doesn’t really look like that’ll be an issue. While Elena’d already jumped to her feet, Gwen’s taken her place and Ben’s sat himself back down purposefully, their daemons both in their laps. In fact, the only people standing are Alan, Argit, and Kevin, along with their daemons. Alan and Monarch look as ready to fight as she feels. It’s, nice. Especially when Llyr pipes up from the back.

“That’s a bullshit rule,” he says, to everyone’s apparent pride, “and we’re not supporting it.”

“Nobody is asking you to help her, old man,” Argit adds, “just telling you that we are. If that’s a problem, well, sucks to be you.”

“I think your crew is mutinying,” Elena finally says, unable to help a smirk. She remembers how torn up her father was that Max Tennyson had thrown him out, called him a liar, blacklisted their family, this serves him right.

When Max turns his glare on her, she glares right back.

~

“So, what way are we headed?”

“South, I’ll tell you when to turn.”

It’s two hours after the confrontation with Max and Elena, Ben, and Kevin have piled into the tech dealer’s Dodge to check out her father’s lab, leaving the others to continue searching for The Man. Normally she would’ve preferred to leave sooner, anything to get things moving, but Argit had insisted they actually get a pizza and hang around a while. Something about making their point clear. For the entire time she and Celio hadn’t been able to go anywhere alone, somebody always following close by to make sure Max and Deana didn’t try to throw them out themselves.

They’d filled the hours with research (and oh how her teeth ground when she watched the video of her father’s interrogation, after Kevin and Argit hacked the system to find it) and banter. Apparently, Alan is a hybrid. Susi touches Kevin as easily as Argit, but Argit, it turns out, is dating Gwen’s brother Ken. Ben and Kevin’s relationship is awkward but improving, Cassie and Annelie are close. Susi and Argit have practically adopted Alan and Monarch as their own and they still aren’t sure how they feel about it.

She and Celio have pretty much walked into a soap opera.

~

There’s a tension in Elena’s shoulders when they finally get to the building.

“Our dad started acting really weird a few months ago,” she says, trying to ignore the knot in her stomach and the memories behind her eyes, focusing instead on footsteps behind her and Celio’s claws at her ear. “We followed him one night to this place.”

“Well, hanging out here certainly qualifies as weird…” Cassie is practically pinned to Ben’s leg, primed and ready to lash out at any threats. Kevin, meanwhile, is looking around the area like he’s sightseeing. Annelie jumps from his shoulder and lands as a large housecat.

“We’ve seen weirder. Should’ve seen our aunt’s house. Always smelled like hay.” The door isn’t locked, which is somehow creepier than anything else. Ben hisses when they crowd inside the tattered, filthy entryway.

“But did it look like a cockroach farm?”

“No, that was just our cousins’ room.” Celio heaves a quiet laugh and Elena wants to join him, she really does, but she can’t bring herself to as she leads the way up the stairs.

“Dad’s been studying the chips for years, but he suddenly didn’t want us to be involved,” she explained as they made their way up. “Eventually, he just stopped coming home.”

At first glance the lab looks just as she left it yesterday, when they came to grab the canister for the meeting. Tables covered with papers, shelves full of boxes, computer, diagrams even she has trouble understanding sometimes. But, it’s not the same.

“Someone’s been here,” she says, as Celio jumps off her head to land on Annelie, using her as a steed to check the room. “Taking things.”

“Or looking for things.” Ben waves a piece of paper in her direction as Kevin scours the rest of the stack like a man in the desert hunting for water. “Check out these notes, Elena. Your dad wasn’t studying the chips, he was upgrading them, developing them.”

“Poorly.”

“Manners, Kevin.”

“Well he was.” Elena’s not sure what’s worse, the insinuation Ben is making that this is all her dad’s fault (that wasn’t him, it wasn’t him, it wasn’t him) or Kevin’s insulting his work.

“My dad is a brilliant scientist,” she says, “who just, got obsessed with his work.”

“Which was?” Cassie has wandered away, but Ben is looking at her expectantly.

“He said the chips were a threat, the Plumbers wouldn’t listen, so he took the chips so he could try to neutralize them on his own.”

“Shame he never tried Frankensteining them.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Elena,” Celio’s voice is just audible over the shuffling of papers and footfalls, “Elena, the containers are gone.” What? No, that can’t be right. But it’s true, when she kneels down to check they simply aren’t there.

“This is where I found the chips,” she says, gesturing to the empty space in front of her, “just yesterday, they were right here.”

“And now they’re in, Berlin? Or headed there.” Cassie’s managed to find herself on the top of the table, pawing through a load of shipping notices. Ben picks one of them up.

“I thought you said your dad disappeared weeks ago, Elena? These were signed today.” No no no no no-

“He did.” Celio crawls onto the floor, then to her hand to be moved back to her ear. “I don’t know what’s going on…” No.

“Um, guys?” Kevin is still where they left him pawing through notes and plans, but now he’s turned to the door. More specifically, to the random group of people standing in the doorway. Annelie jumps up to hiss beside him, her attention on the static, unseeing daemons among them, and his hands are already taking on the metal of the table.

“Who are you?” Ben asks them as they both scoot away from the doorway. “What do you want?”

“We want to help.” The tone is bland and emotionless and sends a shiver up Elena’s spine.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Kevin says, items falling off the table as Annelie becomes a bobcat. “You can all toddle on home now.” A flash of movement catches Elena’s eye just in time for her to see some _things_ skitter beneath a woman’s skin. She wants to throw up, she is _this_ close.

“Guys, I think they’re being controlled.”

“Because the dead eyes and zombie daemons didn’t say that.”

“Quiet, Kev. The chips?” Ben is craning to get the same view as her, Cassie growling and pressing herself against his leg. He’s fiddling with the Omnitrix just out of sight, but Elena can’t see a single clear image.

“We want you to meet the queen.” Kevin snorts, shifting to more central position between the chip-infested people and them.

“No thanks, already got enough of those in my life.”

“What are you waiting for?” Annelie hisses while he talks, clearly directing it at them. “Go, we’ve got your back.”

And it’s a good thing, because the moment they notice Elena, Ben, and Cassie moving towards the fire escape the group lunges. Another of them turns out to be waiting when Elena wrenches the door open- seriously, what is going on?!- only to be met with her fist in his face and a quick flip over the railing to the ground below. She ignores the way Ben’s eyes go wide at the sight, but smiles at Cassie’s whoop. Kevin and Annelie aren’t far behind, diving off the fire escape at about the same time they reach the bottom of it and shoving them ahead of themselves towards the car.

“I will leave your deadweight behind, move!”

“Kevin,” Ben says when he piles in and realizes that there’s a nasty fire in Kevin’s eyes as he backs out, not giving anyone the chance to do more than shut doors behind them, “Kevin tell me you aren’t-”

“I am.”

“We do not run people over!”

“Will one of you get us out of here?!”

Kevin guns it and only hits two. Elena’s not about to give him trouble about it.

~

“What was up with the Omnitrix back there?”

“I think it has something to do with the chips? It gets weird sometimes when it’s wants to scan something, maybe it’s having trouble with them.”

“Because that’s just what we need, your watch out of commission with mind control chips attacking people in swarms.”

“If I could get a single living sample, that might help?” The car jolts to a stop and Kevin turns in his seat to glare at Ben.

“I am not getting you a goddamn doom chip!” And Elena just can’t help it-

“But _Kevin_ -”

~

The plan is to go to the local Ship-It hub, that being where the chips are presumed to have been sent, but they don’t even need to say anything when an SUV screams down the road from that direction, fire occasionally erupting from the open trunk and two spiked metal balls coming up behind. In fact the only sound as Kevin turns is him sighing. Ben is careful to change into a blue mothperson- Big Chill, they are informed- before they get close to the chips. The fight’s actually easy, almost too easy. Big Chill freezes them with icy breath and the temperature difference between that and the fireballs Alan’d been lobbing causes most of them to just shatter. The rest simply collapse to the ground, apparently too few to function as a threat.

They still let Kevin handle gathering them up.

“What was that about,” Elena asks, hovering to the side with Alan and the Tennysons. Monarch sighs as she answers.

“We managed to get an energy signature off those dead ones we had,” she says, “and found out there were a load at the local Ship-It office. Except they were gone when we got there.”

“All there was was a possessed clerk,” Alan continues for her, and Llyr brings up the rear.

“Right up until we left, then those ones came out of nowhere and started chasing us.”

“Same here,” Cassie says. “A bunch of those possessed people ambushed us at the lab.”

“So, we have an ongoing possession problem then.” Gwen sighs as she speaks. “This just keeps getting better and better…”

“Well the good news is, we still have the energy signature-” Ben smiles as he speaks and it’s heartening “-and now that we have some live ones we can hopefully get the Omnitrix back into commission around them.”

“I sure hope so.”

~

When they get back to the base Max and Deana are stood at the same computers they were before, watching as message after message pops up on the main screen and looking distinctly overwhelmed.

“Where were you?” the dog daemon growls as the lot of the group come into view. “We’ve got Plumbers from all over the world calling in about attacks by strange alien tech-”

“The chips.” She stops and gives Cassie a firm look.

“Did _they_ tell you that?” Deana’s eyes dart to Elena and Celio as she says it and Elena feels her jaw clench.

“We saw it.” Alan’s right there again, a hand on her arm as Monarch glares the boxer down as a large goat.

“They’re alive,” Gwen adds as she, Kevin, and Argit slip passed everyone else to settle in at various monitors, “very much alive.”

“And have a nasty habit of burrowing into people and taking over their minds,” Ben adds. Max shakes his head.

“No, those chips were nothing more than extraterrestrial hardware, it’s not possible.” Elena scoffs.

“Yeah,” she says, gesturing to the screen that’s still putting though messages automatically, “clearly.” Fuck it, what’s he going to do besides glare at her?

Nothing.

“Got a few locks on the energy signature,” Kevin says, voice a little breathy, lilting too much for Elena’s stomach. The image that comes up on the screen is not pretty, with markers showing concentrations of chips in way too many places across the globe.

“I think,” Argit says quietly to Gwen and their daemons, “they’ve gotten past our initial hundred-mile radius.”

“Yeah, and spreading further every minute…” A bit of pride swells in Elena, despite everything.

“So they _are_ a threat,” she says, smirking at Max and Deana, “just like my father said.”

“Those things were inert three years ago,” Max growls back. “Your father’s tinkering woke them up somehow, now they’re a threat to the entire world!” Elena’s nostrils flare and her fists clench.

“They were _dormant_ , not inert, ask anyone here!”

“Girls, girls,” Susi cuts in, “you’re both pretty, now can we please work on saving the planet?!”

“We know where they are,” Kevin says, “I say we start shooting.” Ben glares at him as Annelie drops her head in her now-ferrety paws.

“We are not shooting innocent victims, Kevin.”

“Besides,” Gwen adds, “we don’t know that shooting the victims will do anything but deprive the chips of hosts, and if we’re doing that we may as well just destroy the planet ourselves.” Kevin huffs and Argit shakes his head, patting his knee.

“Don’t mess with electricity kids,” Annelie says from his shoulder, “it fucks with your head and even with a healing factor the damage takes a while to really fix.”

“That explains so much.” Elena doesn’t even have words, but she does have an idea.

“Can we find the queen?” That gets everyone’s attention.

“Queen?” Max asks, but nobody is paying him and Deana any mind anymore. Gwen’s grinning.

“Yeah, the Ship-It clerk was talking about a queen-”

“So were the people at the lab! Like she was in charge!” Cassie grins at Ben’s enthusiasm and Elena.

“If she’s running the show, then if we take her down then maybe we can stop all this!” Shaking his head, Max at least seems to get with the program, slamming his hand on the desk nearby where Gwen has set the chips.

“Okay then,” he says, “let’s find this queen. We’re gonna see about dissecting some of these chips, find out what makes them tick. Gwen, Llyr, see if you can figure out how to separate those chips from their hosts. Alan, help Argit and Susi figure out a way to stop those drones without setting everybody on fire. Ben, Kevin, you guys are on queen search, find her. And Elena,” he glares at her again before turning on his heel and heading for his office, “don’t get in the way.” Even Celio is growling at that.

“Fucking piece of-”

“Come on, Elena,” when she turns back to the group Gwen is gesturing her forward while Llyr pulls out a seat, “we could use some help.” Who is she to say no?

“I’d be glad to.”

~

“I think I’ve found her!” Everyone turns at once to stare at Alan, who’s beaming at the group and at the screen. He and Argit had already figured out an electro-magnetic pulse would do the trick, and while Argit and Kevin set to work putting together some appropriate tech he’d gone to help Ben with the search. Apparently to their boon.

“Are you sure?” Kevin asks from the other side of the room, leaning over Susi to see.

“Yeah! See?” Alan points at the main screen while Monarch practically preens. “London, Paris, Munich, all big cities right? But then there’s Bumfuck, Missouri-”

“Language, Kitten.”

“-in the middle of nowhere. Except,” Alan beams even wider, focusing the map in on that location, “Ship-It World Distribution Center.” Laughing, Gwen pulls Alan into a quick hug.

“You are awesome.”

“We try.”

“I’m gonna go grab Grandpa Max,” Ben says with a grin, “you guys get ready for a roadtrip!”

He’s not gone three minutes before there’s a crash and everyone is charging deeper into the base. Elena doesn’t lag behind so much as her legs are shorter than Kevin, Gwen, and Susi’s and by the time she gets to the ‘office’ Kevin is propping a half-conscious Max up in a desk chair.

“Grandpa? Are you okay?” Ben and Gwen are clustered around him, watching him anxiously. The smile that comes to his face as he wakes up just, isn’t right.

“We’re fine,” he says, and that’s when Celio brings her attention to Deana, laying under the desk, eyes blank, “never better. Why are you all looking at us like that?” ‘Like that’ is like something is seriously wrong with them, which it clearly is. Elena and Kevin are both already dragging Ben and Gwen back from their grandfather, Annelie setting herself between their daemons and the old man, again a bobcat. Argit and Susi are in the back, keeping Alan and Monarch safely furthest away.

“We’re great,” Max continues, “we’re happy. We’re going to colonize Earth.”

“Under any other circumstances I wouldn’t be surprised-”

“Shush Argit!” Gwen flashes him a quick glare before turning back to Max. “Grandpa please.” Ben looks just as desperate.

“You have to fight it Grandpa!” Max laughs and the laugh just isn’t natural.

“There is no fighting,” he says. “You can’t stop what’s coming. The Plumbers are finished.” A strange smoke starts pouring out of a nearby vent, quickly covering the small area. “Mankind is finished.”

“Grandpa!”

By the time the smoke clears enough to see, he’s gone. Deana as well, both disappeared deep into the empty tunnels that make up what was once a thriving base, back when they all were still small. Llyr’s beak is buried into Cassie’s fur, Gwen’s arm is looped with Ben’s. Kevin and Elena finally let go.

“We have to stop the queen.”

~

There’s a lot of people at the distribution center. Like, an asston of people, and they’re pretty sure most, if not all, are inhabited by chips. The very same chips they’re transporting by the caseload onto masses of trucks. There’s a brief instance where Argit and Ben have to hold Gwen down before she can rush to her grandfather (Llyr explains how they nearly lost Ken and Ríonach to a similar situation months before and Elena’s chest clenches in sympathy), but they get to the inside of the building without any real trouble. It’s just that-

“It’s like a human assembly line,” Gwen says with frightened awe, looking out over the center of the building.

“…stay in school, Red.” There’s loads of people scooping chips out of boxes, putting them in canisters, and packing the canisters in crates to be shipped.

“Hush Argit.” And at the center of it all, hooked up to masses of thick tubes spilling out endless supplies of chips, is

“The dude from the garage!” Kevin’s already absorbing some of the catwalk as Celio clings closer to Elena’s ear. No. No no no no no

“That’s Victor Validus!” No no no

“I thought you said you didn’t know that guy?!” It’s not, it can’t, no

“That’s not my father,” she says. There’s no conviction behind it but, no, no

“Elena-”

“It’s not my father.” There’s a bony hand on her arm, pulling her from the banister. She can make out Argit’s voice but Celio’s is louder for her. No no no, they’re fine, they’re safe, they aren’t-

“Elena.” Her jaw hurts she’s clenching her teeth so hard, and she can feel her nails digging into her palms. They’re all downstairs now, when did they get downstairs? Argit is talking, toying with her hair, carefully on the opposite side from Celio. Susi is between them and the rest of the group. “He’s gonna be fine, I promise.”

“I don’t know, Hedgehog,” Kevin says and Argit and Susi both glare at him. He’s standing by lockers they’re all behind, he and Annelie, keeping watch. “He’s the one making chips.”

“We think he’s possessed by the queen,” Annelie continues for him and Elena wants to scream. They still don’t know how to separate chips from hosts.

“Kevin,” Ben turns to him, his expression trying to be hopeful, “could you-?” Kevin is shaking his head before he can finish.

“I’m _built_ for that much electricity, Ben. Best case scenario he gets badly hurt, worst case he fries or comes out a different person.”

“But-”

“Other people can’t heal like me.” There’s a pricking behind Elena’s eyes that she can’t stop.

“We have to save him,” she says forcing her voice to stay even through sheer will. Then Gwen’s there, her hand on her arm.

“We’re gonna try, Elena, but…”

“But there may not be an option.” If nothing else, Alan looks as sick as she feels as he says the words. The group falls silent, daemons pressed to their people, eyes downcast.

“Argit,” it’s a shock to everyone when Ben suddenly speaks, “would your quills work on these guys?” Ears pressing back against his mane, Argit slowly nods.

“Theoretically, why?” Ben chews his lip and squares his shoulders, Cassie clenches her jaw.

“If we go rogue, and you quill us, Kev and Annelie can take us out easy.”

“Ben!” Gwen and Elena surge to their feet as one unit, eyes wide. Alan’s choking on the message off to the side, Monarch just barely holding them both steady. The others look, way too calm no matter how unhappy their expressions.

“What are you talking about?” Gwen demands, and Ben gives her a sad smile.

“Well, the Omnitrix scanned the chips on our way back to the base, so I can turn into one now and go fight the queen one on one-” Elena doesn’t like where this is going “-but we can’t be sure the queen won’t control me.”

“Ben…”

“But we’ve got Argit and Kev and between the two of them they could take me out. So if my plan doesn’t work, they take me out and…”

“And I destroy everything.” Ben turns his smile to Kevin and nods and Elena wants to scream.

“No,” she steps forward, grabbing Ben’s arm in one hand with a grip that won’t break, “Ben, don’t, I can’t risk-”

“We can’t lose you too, Ben,” Gwen’s come up behind her and take his other arm, “there has to be another way.”

“Can you think of one?” They can’t, it’s the worst part. Their plan right now consists of ‘hope Ben doesn’t get mindcontrolled and if he does Kevin kills everyone’ and that’s just- “Create a distraction, and trust me.”

~

She does trust him, really and truly. It’s why she looked to him for help in the first place. Why they were friends. Are friends. And it’s why when Kevin makes her a few lengths of metal she accepts them with a nod and dives into the fray right with everybody else.

It’s not an easy fight. She’s been in a few before, actual fights that she participated in rather than ran from or was on the sidelines of, even been outnumbered, but they were nothing like this. Not even anything more intense than three-on-one. It’s rough, and tiring, and even in the short time they’re fighting she gets knocked around some. If she lives to see morning she’s going to have a mass of bruises to deal with.

She cracks a woman upside the head and hears somebody scream directly behind her as Celio lets loose on them. He’s no rhino like Monarch’s become, but there’s nobody she trusts more with her back. Especially with the others also keeping an eye on it. There’s been more than one person dragged away by their daemons by Annelie, or driven off by Gwen and Llyr.

Still, there’s only so many of them, and so much range on their few EMP grenades, and so many more of the drones, and they find themselves huddling together for safety, driven back towards the center of the room. The chips are starting to glow, starting to wake up at the behest of their queen. Elena’s sick and worried about Ben, about her father, her friends, the world, and looking around shows the other’s feeling the same way.

Then the world is light. Caramelly light pouring out from her father, from the drones, rising towards the ceiling in a seething storm of, whatever it is. Gwen’s hand is wrapped up in her sleeve, Argit and Alan hovering at her other side, Kevin stationed protectively at their backs, and all they can do is stare. Stare as the light grows brighter, as it flashes inside the canisters and crates of chips, as it violently explodes out.

When the light fades, when the spots fade, her breath stops in her throat.

“Dad!” He’s collapsed on the platform he’d been standing on, but he looks up at the sound of her voice, and the surprised smile on his face outshines everything else, from the flash of green she runs passed to the sunshine outside. Climbing up the platform hurt her bruises, and she needs a moment to figure out how not to jostle the tubes coming out of him, but it’s worth it to wrap her arms around him, bury her face into his shoulder for the first time in years.

“Miela...” Celio’s voice is strained, and Elena shifts her face enough to watch him fall to the ground. Miela is there, limping her way closer, in all her bejeweled blue and orange beauty. The tarantula hawk is quickly overtaken by Celio, and after a brief moment of waving their antennae at each other he immediately falls into grooming her.

They’re back together, all of them, safe and sound. They’re- She buries her face in her father’s shoulder again, ignoring how his jacket is getting wetter, and Argit climbing up to try to get her dad free. Just, telling him everything, in a stream of breathless Spanish. How worried they were, how they missed them, how they love them, how if they ever scare them like this again she will kill them and serve them to the police.

Maybe a little extreme, but he’s laughing so she won’t complain.

~

It takes nearly forty minutes to get her father unhooked from everything, all of which she spends in contact with him. It’s been weeks, after all, and there’s no way in hell she’s going to let him out of her sight. Until, that is, the medical professionals take over. Oh, he’s still in sight, make no mistake, but she can’t hover over him quite the same. But there’s other things going on, like the others hovering not far from where she’s hovering, watching like hawks.

“So?” Kevin asks when they all meet in the middle, and Elena notices that out of them he’s the one that looks most worried, watching her father over her head.

“They’ll be fine.” Everything’s okay now. Everyone’s safe. The Tennysons and Alan are grinning.

“That’s great, Elena,” Ben says, and reaches out to put a hand her shoulder.

Within thirty seconds she is dragging everyone who isn’t a daemon into a group hug. They get to cuddle up as much as possible with Celio, who is singing so many praises. Three years since they’d seen the Tennysons and they dropped everything to help. Alan, Argit, Kevin, they and theirs didn’t even know them a day ago and they dropped everything to help. Less than twenty-four hours ago they’d been alone and on their last option and now, now their family was back together and-

“Thank you,” so maybe her voice was a little watery, and getting more so as people hugged her back, she deserved it. “Thank you so, so much.”

“Hey, what are friends for?”

**Author's Note:**

> Settled daemons identifiable to the average human introduced include:
> 
> Elena Validus- Celio ([Bombardier Beetle](http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/CC/CC70EEA5-AA2C-46D7-B3AD-2591BB60528C/Presentation.Large/Bombardier-beetle-dorsal-view.jpg))  
> Victor Validus- Miela ([Tarantula Hawk Wasp](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--d1vDegvT--/zyiyfpjwbp80qyqxstdy.jpg))


End file.
